A Moscow automaker that wanted to prove the Russian auto industry had moved beyond making consumers wait ten years to buy tiny, inexpensive cars says there's a ten year wait for its tiny, inexpensive car.
Just as eager car owners sometimes waited a decade to buy a Lada during the Soviet era, 51,188 people put their name on the list to purchase Ë-Auto's new Ë-Mobile (pronounced "Yo-Auto" and "Yo-mobile") during the first day the company's website took reservations. In less than a week, more than 100,000 people had signed up.
Of course, unlike the days of waiting for Ladas and Moskvitches, Ë-Auto didn't require prepayment to get on the list, and there are plans to increase the number of factories building the car to meet demand.
Now, according to Russian news service RIA Novosti, orders have been placed in advance for the next ten years. Not bad for a company whose St. Petersburg plant just had its groundbreaking ceremony and isn't expected to start building cars until the middle of 2012, though we expect the number of pre-orders to fall precipitously when deposits must be made.
Ë-Auto is the project of Russian billionaire and New Jersey Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov. The project is conspicuously Russian as a point of pride, with engineering and design all done domestically. Even the company's name was chosen strategically to include "Ë," the seventh letter of the Russian alphabet. The company's lineup of stylish, two-tone coupes, sedans and crossovers will be built in Russia with some components sourced from Magna-Steyr.
While the first cars off the line will be conventional, gas-engined vehicles, within the next few years Ë-Auto plans to release hybrids that run on natural gas and use supercapacitors instead of batteries. The Ë-Mobile is expected to sell for between $12,000 and $15,000. To keep curb weight and prices low, it'll be built with a polymer exterior. The first, conventionally-engined Ë-Mobiles claim a top speed of 75 mph and gas mileage of up to 67 mpg.
Image: Ë-Auto
